Writing Grant Applications

If you plan to stay on the academic route after your Ph.D., you will certainly, sooner or later, have to apply for some sort of funding, be it for the organisation of a conference or a funded conference place, funding to explore new teaching methods, or – perhaps most commonly – to carry out your research. Funding applications can take as many forms as the projects for which you may seek funding, and – as always – my post and tips are based on my experience within the arts and humanities in particular, and they are also derived, largely, from a number of collaborative (rather than individual) funding applications (see my CV if you’re interested in what kind of funding I’ve been awarded).

THE BASICS: GUIDELINES & ELIGIBILITY

The following may sound like the most obvious “tips” you’ve ever received, but there are numerous funding applications which are unsuccessful for very basic reasons. To avoid this, you now often are required to have your application internally reviewed, but here are some basics nevertheless:

– Check the eligibility criteria for the funding scheme or competition carefully.
– If there are any ambiguities or you are not sure if you’re eligible to apply, get in touch with the funder!
– You don’t want to spend hours on an application which will be rejected outright because you’re ineligible to apply.
– The same counts for your proposed project. Does it match the remit of the funder and the funding scheme?
– Are all the activities you propose (events, field trips, research, etc.) eligible to be included in your application?
– Are all the costs you have listed eligible (there should be a list of ineligible costs in the guidelines)?

WRITING YOUR APPLICATION

– Complete your application with the guidelines to hand.
– There will be specific points you are asked to address in each section of the application.
– Do not omit any of these and use them to structure your response in each section.
– E.g.: if the question is which of the scheme’s aims your project fulfills and how it will do so, provide exactly that!
– Don’t simply list what you will do. List what you will do and how those activities address the scheme aims.
– Your application should always clearly explain why your particular project is relevant and worth funding.
– If your project is collaborative, what is the rationale for and role of the different partners involved?
– If you are asked to describe your project for non-specialists, do so. Not all panel members may be specialists!
– As with any research proposals, be clear in what the remit and aims of your project are.
– What do you propose to do and what will this achieve?
– What will the realistic outcomes be?
– Ensure your costing, too, is realistic. Offer value for money, but work with actual quotes, not estimates.
– Don’t forget any costs! – If your proposed project addresses one of the funder’s current priority areas, say so!
– Think carefully about who will benefit from your project (specialist audience; non-academic audiences, etc.).
– Dissemination: think beyond conference papers. Can you involve members of the public, for example?

GET HELP!

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel – there are plenty of people out there who’ve submitted lots of successful applications and who are usually happy to help! So:

– Always ask your supervisor, mentor or other experienced colleagues to read drafts of the application.
– You should be able to get help from the Research Support Office (or sth similar) at your institution.
– These people have often dealt with hundreds of funding applications and their insights are invaluable.
– They’re not specialists, but they can tell whether your application fits the brief, addresses all vital areas, etc.
– They can also help you with the costing in particular.

GENERAL THOUGHTS

It’s best to start with applying for external funding sooner rather than later. When you are a postgraduate, you are eligible for plenty of brilliant schemes, especially but also beyond those run by Research Councils. These don’t have to be for your Ph.D. project. They can be collaborative ventures such as conferences, establishing networks, etc. and thus can have far wider benefits than simply having external, competitive funding on your CV. Organising a conference or establishing a network will put you in touch with people who may become friends, collaborators, and so on, and they can also connect you with researchers whose work you use and admire. Equally, conference organisation can be extremely valuable and may well result in your first edited publication. When applying for collaborative grants, all the criteria I’ve outlined in the “Committees & Boards” post count! Don’t be dead weight. Get involved, co-draft the application, plan, organise and discuss. It’ll all benefit you in future!

Apart from these benefits, however, there is also the brutal reality: once you are no longer registered as a postgraduate, the external funding for which you can apply drastically reduces. For Research Council schemes you need to be employed by or studying at an institution, and even if you have a post after your Ph.D. you will find there are plenty of criteria you have to meet in order to be a named applicant or co-investigator on a grant application. If you finish your Ph.D. and have no funding experience, it can be a gap on your CV which becomes difficult to fill without an academic position or affiliation (though there are plenty of alternative funding sources; don’t forget small grants by subject associations, etc.). If you’re unsure where to apply for funding, ask your supervisor, colleagues, or the research office (who often come across pots of money that aren’t so obvious). Once you’ve found a funder and scheme you think would work for you, give it a go! All they can say is no, and all this means is you’ll have to try again. Having funding bids rejected is not at all unusual, and it’s better to get used to this early. Practice makes perfect, as they say, so don’t be shy!

Nadine is Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University. Her research covers the literary and cultural histories of women, gender, and feminism from the nineteenth century through to the present day. She is currently completing a monograph on the Victorian widow (Liverpool University Press, 2018), and is leading War Widows' Stories, a participatory research and oral history project on war widows in Britain.

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[…] Incidentally, this is the exact same situation with grant writing, and therefore proposal writing which follows basically the same form, obviously with some adjustments. Start with Dr. Karen’s Foolproof Grant Template and supplement with The New Academic’s Writing Grant Applications. […]

[…] No matter if you can or can’t secure teaching hours, it’s perfectly normal that you take on a non-academic job. Those bills don’t pay themselves, and no one who lives in the real world will frown upon you for having to earn a living. The problem isn’t the non-academic job in itself. The problem is keeping up your profile as a researcher while you do other work. As many of the posts in “Brains, Time, Money: Part-Time & Self-Funded Postgraduate Study” mention, it’s tough working a normal day and then switching over from that day job to your research brain in the evening (or whenever you don’t do paid work) to write conference papers, journal articles, and job applications. This is tough, and I would be lying if I said that it’s only for a short, finite period of time. It may only take a couple of months to find an academic job, or it may take you several years. It would also be a lie to say it’s impossible. A vast amount of people have done it, and have subsequently secured an academic position. I’ve said elsewhere that juggling various kinds of tasks is a key skill we have to learn as early as possible during our PhDs. It becomes even more invaluable when you do not possess the privilege to focus all your time on academic activities. Be strategic and don’t lose focus: what’s the next gap to fill on your CV? Make a list of the things you need to do to make you employable, or more employable. Work that list off item by item. Focus on quality, not quantity. The same rules of selection as apply as I’ve outlined in Academic Juggling, but it’s likely you’ll have to be even stricter with yourself, and you’ll have to show extra initiative to fund those conferences and archive trips if you haven’t got a departmental budget to draw on. Small pots of money in various places are often overlooked – seek them out (and see some short ideas on where to start in this post). […]

[…] are probably not specifically asked to write grant proposals while you are doing your PhD project, you will need grant writing experience immediately after obtaining your PhD. Therefore, you cannot begin too early with this. Being […]

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